NHS car parks pay for patients...apparently

I don't know why I am still amazed by Tony Blair's rhetoric - after ten years I should be used to it - but I am.

As anyone who has ever visited a sick friend or relative in hospital knows, the parking fees are astronomical.

Now Tony Blair has said that they have to be exorbitant or else the NHS would have to face cuts. The PM, confronted at a meeting of Labour's ruling National Executive Committee, said NHS trusts needed the cash and losing it would mean cuts. Leaked minutes of the 20 March meeting said of Mr Blair: "He defended hospital income from parking charges as otherwise the money would have to come from patient care."

What???

The parking fees, which vary widely, have become cash cows for NHS trusts which raked in more than £95million in England last year. Mr Blair and Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt are resisting growing demands to scrap them or enforce capping.

Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb said: "The PM is blind to what is happening. Excessive hospital car park charging can become a tax on sickness, hitting those on low incomes and the elderly hard."

And Labour MP Sharon Hodgson said: "The burden of car parking and other travel charges just adds too much financial stress and strain to many cancer patients and others with serious illnesses. The Government needs to show sympathy, at least by exempting certain patients from parking charges."

The parking fees apparently pay for doctors and nurses. It was only a while back that he was telling us that we couldn't have cheaper petrol because the tax pays for "schools'n'ospitals".

Does every tax pound fund the NHS?

What do we pay National Insurance for?

Vote Labour!